Sharp: Polesitter sounds good.

Scott Sharp has admitted that the word 'polesitter' sounded good after he used a pair of blazing laps to claim the front of the grid for Saturday's Bombardier/Learjet 550 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Leaving nothing to chance, the Indycar veteran broke the longest pole drought in Rahal Letterman Racing history, carding the two best laps of the day in afternoon qualifying and scoring his sixth career pole. Both of Sharp's laps were quick enough to earn him the top spot, which was the first for the Rahal Letterman Racing team since September of 2005. The pole run was also the first for Sharp since 2001, breaking an 87-race streak without a pole - the longest such streak in the IndyCar Series.

"Wow, that sounds good - polesitter," Sharp grinned, "It's been a long time since someone has said that. I just can't say enough. We've been a little behind, no doubt, this year. Anyone that is not one of the top three teams is a little behind.

"But the Patr?n Rahal Letterman team has been working really hard. The minute the guys rolled the car off the trailer, it has been right on. We've hadn't had to make a lot of changes and it worked well in race trim last night, as everybody did, I think, working that for the race. We had to make a few changes over night just to trim the car out a little bit but I'm really pleased. I never thought we'd run that quick."

Sharp collected $10,000 from AAMCO Transmissions for winning the pole, and also gained a Toro lawn tractor for his performance.

"We thrashed trying to just learn about the car," he continued, "We forsook a little bit of speed just trying to learn about the car, but it's starting to pay off. Some of the things we did really loosened us up pretty good for Indy, but those are the kind of things that work better on a banked track and we showed that it has.

"I've been saying all year that this team is coming together, and I think we've 'arrived' this weekend. We made a lot of progress [at Indianapolis] in May, and carried a bit more of that on to Milwaukee. We learned some things there that helped us this weekend as well. With [team-mate] Jeff [Simmons] in eighth, it's a great day for the entire Rahal Letterman team."